Economania

The website of Mensa's International Special Interest Group for economics.

Economania Links & Resources

Compiled by Bill Kruse

Around the turn of the century before last, there was a protracted battle. It was not a geographical battle, fought around and over physical boundaries, by nation against nation. Instead it was between the small group of people who own the private banks, and the rest of us. They won, so we lost. This is the world that you and I, all unknowing, were later born into. Consequences remain...

For the most part we don't give it any thought but in this world the universal medium of exchange is called money. Because they'd won that big battle, very nearly all of it there is comes supplied by and so owed to private bankers. This world is made so we can't live very well without money. However, there's only one place we can get it, and when we can get it, it's expensive. We have to give back more of it than we are given. That expensive place to get it is the private banks.

You'll have more idea of how this has come about, and the terrible harm this arrangement does to us as a community, when you've followed some of these links...

A quicker and arguably dirtier and possibly even more essential guide to what's REALLY going on in the financial world once more from Ellen Brown. She does this (IMHO) better than anyone else, that's why she gets to go twice.

Thomas Jr. walks us through banking and money options that aren't dictated to us by government. We need to understand these alternatives ready for when the mainstream financial system goes pop, which looks to be any minute now.

An educational charity working to reduce debt from the personal to the national level, with a specific emphasis on explaining the banking and financial system of the UK and the world, to lay-people and legislators. JGS is the author of 'The Money Bomb', featured on this very page.

The Citizen's Income Trust promotes debate on the desirability and feasibility of a Citizen's Income by publishing a newsletter and other publications, maintaining this website, maintaining a library of resources, and responding to requests for information.

The message is about public banking, banks owned by the public where the profits go back to the public, not to a private company. Look at your local high street, I'll bet the banks are Natwest, LloydsTSB, Barclays, all the usual suspects in other words... so why isn't there a bank that belongs to you and your community, a bank of Yourtown, where you and your neighbours can invest your money and see the profits go back to your local community instead of a private company? This idea has undeniable and obvious merits for any community - so where are they? Learn more about the idea here.

The (rather dry) textbook explanation of the same. Is this obfuscation deliberate? Some would say it is, and remind you that The Wizard of Oz, with its descriptions of smoke and mirrors, is said by some to be metaphorical.

PEOPLE For Mathematically Perfected Economy (PFMPE): mathematically perfected economy (MPE) is the singular integral solution to 1) inflation and deflation, 2) systemic manipulation of the cost or value of money or property, and 3) inherent, irreversible multiplication of debt in proportion to a vital circulation, engendering inevitable systemic failure at a finite system lifespan defined by an inevitable, terminal sum of insoluble debt. Mathematically Perfected Economy is every prospective debtor's right to issue their promise to pay, free of extrinsic manipulation, adulteration, or exploitation of that promise, or the natural opportunity to make good on it (that's what they say anyway - BB).

"No-one could have seen this coming" is the politician's excuse for not foreseeing the banking crisis. Here's evidence from former BIS chief economist William White that highly placed people did indeed see it coming but were ignored.

Starting in the Austrian town of Worgl, alternative currency worked so well that it spread to neighbouring towns, where it worked well too. Seeing how well plain folks could get along without them, the authorities banned it. If they hadn't, all this too-big-to-fail nonsense very likely couldn't have been justified as, one could strongly argue, there'd be this handy alternative to the big banks.

A variety of articles, some about social and monetary money, some about religion. The real significance here is that you have a small inkling of how far back people have preached, I mean religious people, against usury, against interest, against economic principles we see around us everywhere in modern day life. You have the feeling that if Jesus came back, He wouldn't be too happy with the credit card companies...

The Austrian School. These are they, and this link itself leads to a list of resources they think will help the reader understand the background to the whole sorry mess. The credit crunch itself is really a side issue.

Ever wonder how Germany, defeated in WW1 and suffering rampant inflation, managed to conjure from nowhere enough guns and tanks to start WW2? Read what German financial bigwig of the day Schacht has to say about how the famous German inflation came about and was overcome, then ask yourself why you've never had this properly explained before...

We do, you'll probably smartly say, because it's nationalised. And so it is, but that doesn't mean we own it. In fact, it apparently means, among other things, we don't and we aren't actually allowed to know who does own it... or why we aren't allowed to know, or who says we aren't allowed to know. A shame there's so little attribution in this article but there's much to think on in it.

Just ask yourself the questions here. Then ask the big question - why don't you know the answers? Immensely revealing, illustrates how we're led to believe we're educated when in fact we're simply duped.

This is his early day motion on the subject. He's still acting as if we were in the land of FRB but the principle is still true - banks create money when they pretend to lend it. Note how scarce other MPs have made themselves.

So, what's a movie about a guy curing cancer doing here? Well, see... thing is, it works. It works better than chemo, in fact it makes it redundant. So why isn't it universally sung the praises of and adopted? Because it would put millions of people, currently working in the multi-billion dollar cancer treatment industry, out of work at a stroke. Think of the knock-on effects - it would wreck the economy. So, lots of us have to die and keep on dying unnecessarily so the economy, which we know isn't ours in the first place, can survive. Watch it and weep.

Videos

Congressman Kanjorski recalls the critical moments when the world's economy hung in the balance. If this link's live then you might like to download a copy to convince yourself the video ever existed, as it seems to vanish then reappear. One is reluctant to suggest conspiracy but then there were those in the financial profession recently reluctant to bawl "ICEBERRRRRRRRRRRG!!" when really they should have... one must make up one's own mind.

A little old now but revelatory still to anyone who hasn't understood the basic principles of fractional reserve banking. This is Youtube again. I believe there's a DVD available but I haven't found where yet.

Argentine Adrian (who's been through it all personally) explains why we're doomed, basically. Part Two. It would be nice to think there's going to be a Part Three but given the subject matter... Adrian? ADRIAN??

William K. Black, the former litigation director of the Federal Home Loan Bank Board who investigated the Savings and Loan disaster of the 1980s, discusses one scandal in which a single bank, IndyMac, lost more money than was lost during the entire Savings and Loan crisis. Warning - he gets excited...

Bill Still examines the Wizard of Oz, a tale not for children but a metaphor for America's relationship with the banking fraternity and money in general. Features interviews with Peter Schiff, Ellen Brown and other notables. Unusually this goes into early British financial arrangements in some depth, examining the tally sticks method of accounting, and features filming from inside the Bank of England museum. Very informative and IMV well worth ordering for Britons and Americans alike. My link goes to an abbreviated free version.

A proposed alternative essentially from the Freemen movement. The Lawful Bank provides a gateway to 'The Alternative Monetary System' (TAMS) - a new and independent monetary and banking system owned and controlled by its users/members.

Books

By Michael Rowbotham, a game-changer of a book. Read the first five pages and see if your life doesn't change. An in-depth examination of the dreadful consequences of having an economy based on debt like, er, we do.

By James Gibb Stuart. Recommended for everyone in the UK to read. We could be and should be far better off as a nation. Check out page 149 which suggests to me that the Tories reputation for fiscal prudence is no more than sleight of hand. Essential reading. You can find it on Amazon from time to time too.

By Tacitus, the celebrated Roman historian. His father-in-law Agricola is remembered by we Britons as one of the first governor-generals of the conquered British Isles. Note this quote; "All this in their ignorance, they called civilization, when it was but a part of their servitude". Sound familiar? It should, that was Tacitus talking about us, confident we were so uneducated we wouldn't understand it if we read it. Two thousand years later and he's still right. Look around... we're still in the same circumstances, but with a different group having the monopoly on the medium of exchange we're compelled to use.

Some people say there's a cartel of bank-owning families behind every boom and bust. Years ago I'd have dismissed these people as cranks and conspiracy theorists. Now, after several years running Mensa's (now International) Special Interest Group on Economics, Trade and Finance, I've come to the conclusion that, putting it simply, we are farmed. What we think of as our own culture, one having matured and developed over the years is in fact an imposed culture, in effect no more than a giant battery farm in which we live and function largely as we are told to for the profit of others. I don't think that's what's made the credit crunch though. I think that was drugs. For the first time in the history of economic manipulation, you have Big Drugs in the mix. The money dealers got intoxicated and blew it. Oh, I know about Clinton and the Community Reinvestment Act and A.C.O.R.N. and Fannie and Freddie and all the rest of it, the lack of regulation... I know all that. I've learned, and if you've read enough of the above and gone on to read related articles and literature, you've learned too. I still believe the real biggie that's messed things up for any banking cartel and their plans is... too much coke up too many noses. It's got away from them. However... that war I was talking about earlier. The one between a small group of private bank-owners and the rest of us. I said we lost a battle, and we did. That's why we grew up believing that books had to balance, that money had to come from somewhere. That's why we didn't know banks could make it up. We haven't lost the war though. That goes on. I'm in it, you're in it; what can we do?

You could write to your MP. This at least will bring it home that understanding of the issue itself is beginning to surface again. Ask them how it can be that there can be such a thing as a national debt. Where would a bank, any bank, get more money than a country does? How can any bank be generating and holding more money than the country it does its business in and anyway, aren't these the banks that we've just all had to bail out because... because they had no money? Ask what's going on here. Demand to know!

Write to your daily paper asking these same questions. I doubt you'll see your letters printed or even any comment at first if they are. However, my suspicion here is that members of the press would love to be writing about these subjects but are forced by commercial considerations to write around the real problems, never mentioning them directly. If enough letters on the subject are arriving then they may appeal to their editors (who may in turn then appeal to the paper's owners) that in order to retain any journalistic credibility (and so keep people reading) they will have to openly begin addressing these issues.